Equality Now is stunned by a new policy statement issued by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), which essentially promotes female genital mutilation (FGM) and advocates for “federal and state laws [to] enable pediatricians to reach out to families by offering a ‘ritual nick’,” such as pricking or minor incisions of girls’ clitorises.

Surely pediatricians sworn to do no harm wouldn’t advocate a medically unnecessary practice rooted firmly in hatred of women. Equality Now must have misread the AAP’s statement on FGM, right?

Most forms of FGC are decidedly harmful, and pediatricians should decline to perform them, even in the absence of any legal constraints. However, the ritual nick suggested by some pediatricians is not physically harmful and is much less extensive than routine newborn male genital cutting. There is reason to believe that offering such a compromise may build trust between hospitals and immigrant communities, save some girls from undergoing disﬁguring and life-threatening procedures in their native countries, and play a role in the eventual eradication of FGC. It might be more effective if federal and state laws enabled pediatricians to reach out to families by offering a ritual nick as a possible compromise to avoid greater harm.

Hey, let’s compromise! We can also reach out to the Muslim community and ask men to commit honor “nicking” instead of honor murder. It’s a win-win. They get to continue violently victimizing women under the guise of preserving “honor,” and we get to hold hands and sing “Kumbaya.” What’s a little broken skin as long as we’re avoiding “greater harm”?

And apparently the AAP is concerned about the unintended consequences of continuing to prosecute people for “female genital cutting” (Newspeak for FGM):

Some physicians, including pediatricians who work closely with immigrant populations in which FGC is the norm, have voiced concern about the adverse effects of criminalization of the practice on educational efforts.

Go ahead and scream or puke or tear your hair out. I’ll wait.

Promoting a less extreme version of genital mutilation as a replacement for the horrors of clitoridectomy, excision, and infibulation is door we must never open in America. This is ground we cannot cede.

I don’t really see the problem with the American Academy of Pediatrics advising doctors to offer a “ritual nick” in lieu of the more serious forms of female circumcision that are often on offer in some other parts of the world. The practice is something that is done in modern places that want to have a link to tradition without actually doing any real harm to little girls, from what I understand. All they do is prick your genitals, or make a small cut that heals over, but nothing is removed. You’re basically scratching the girl. It’s not awesome . . . but comparing it to more severe forms of female circumcision troubles me.

. . . .

And it’s not like Western culture is so free of blatantly misogynist traditions, either. Part of me wishes that we had a two minute nicking at the doctor instead of the entire painfully misogynist wedding tradition that persists in the name of tradition.

Ritual laceration of the genitals doesn’t do “any real harm to little girls”? Really? Perpetuating the idea that women’s sexuality is an evil that needs to be suppressed or destroyed doesn’t do “any real harm”?

No, Amanda. Misogyny masquerading as a minor out-patient procedure is still misogyny. This medically supervised clitoral “nicking” still invites the continued importation of toxic, dangerous practices; it sends the unthinkable message that fear of cultural insensitivity makes it desirable to betray young girls.

The American Academy of Pediatrics: 1. Opposes all forms of FGC that pose
risks of physical or psychological harm. 2. Encourages its members to become
informed about FGC and its complications and to be able to recognize
physical signs of FGC. 3. Recommends that its members actively
seek to dissuade families from carrying out harmful forms of FGC.
4. Recommends that its members provide patients and their parents with
compassionate education about the physical harms and psychological risks of FGC while remaining sensitive to the cultural and religious reasons that motivate parents to seek this procedure for their daughters.
1092 FROM THE AMERICAN ACADEMY OF PEDIATRICS
Downloaded fromhttp://www.pediatrics.org by on May 10, 2010

I see nothing wrong with their recommendations. I'm sorry but I read the whole article inPDF and could see nothing other than the APA's dissociation from the practise.

ritamarie

To Kim : Response to AAP statement you lisrted.: 1. 'Opposes all forms of FGC that pose risks………..' clearly implies that ONLY the forms that pose risks is opposed! Is there ANY form of FGC that ?does NOT pose risks??? Why doesn't the AAP oppose ALL forms of FGC???? 2. 'Encourages' members to be informed… too bad all pediatricians weren't REQUIRED to be informed. 3…….actively dissuade families from "HARMFUL FORMS' of FGC. Please tell us ? what form is ?NOT harmful !!.4.' ..provide ..with education about physical harms and psychological RISKS of FGC…'.After the FGC is it a possible ?RISK? that psychological damage will occur?? or is it a definite HARM like the stated physical damage!!
The American Academy of Pediatrics statement is very flawed as it approaches the health and welfare of our girls!!!! Our girls and young women deserve better from the AAP.!!!!

http://www.protocatholic.blogspot.com Gretchen

Well Kim, in the interests of multi-culturalism and unity in diversity, why don't you offer to undergo the 'nick' on your genitals? Then you can tell us all how harmless it is.

I like the Honor Killings. Let's all come together and reach out to our knuckle dragging, goat licking, bone through the nose, friends around the world, and PROMOTE their 'Culture' of MURDERING their own kids. How dare we look down at our nose at cultures that put Plates in their lips, stretch their necks with Metal Rings, and have beauty Contests for GOATS.

Mia

1)This practice is monsterous and barbaric. "Nicking" the genitals of a girl while she's awake and held down is bad enough: Legions of women have described the psychological horror and betrayal they felt. Looking at the pictures, of the screaming children required a group of adults to restrain her sure looks like torture.

2)That's it's done at an age when young girls are very impressionable, and not when they are infants when they would have a chance to forget the trauma – appears deliberate, and therefore depraved. Has it occurred to any of the geniuses supporting this position that it is a symbol and physical cultural assault on a women's genitals designed to maximize pain and traumatize the patient? What's next for the AAP? A position on how to beat a child so as not to leave permanent marks?

3)That they have "cultural and religious reasons" cannot trump the fact that those "reasons" like "cleanliness" are non-scientific. Those are nerve endings being mutilated and destroyed. If we discovered a culture that figured out how to do partial lobotomies on young girls, would the AAP recommend a demi- or petite, "more compassionate" version?

4) How is advocating an injury to a child not a call for violence? Does the first ammendment really protect that type of speech?

Clearly the AAP has become unmoored from the moral foundations of our scientific western culture which respects and promotes the physical integrity and health of young girls.

kafir4life

Compromise is good! Nothing wrong with compromise at all! Practiced all the time! Just look at the taliban! When they throw acid in the face of girsl attending school, it's a humanistic compromise to buring them alive! COMPROMISE! Even that pedophile rapist that invented islam would compromise. If you paid him his protection money, he wouldn't kill you! COMPROMISE! I'd bet those terrorist supporters over at cair would be all for this compromise.

kafir4life

Monday morning spelling…..
girsl = girls
buring = burning

http://www.RestoringForeskin.org Restoring Tally

We are moving in the wrong direction. Instead of loosening our standards in the US, we should be standing firm and being more consistent. We should not allow genital mutilation of childfren just to accomodate another culture.

But, we would be on firmer ground if we re-examined the US male circumcision culture. We still have male infant circumcision, which is a ritual cutting of the male genitals. All children should have the right to their whole body, free from any cutting, alterations, or mutilation.

JeanGmDm

What are you talking about, people come to america specificaly for religious and cultural freedom.

http://www.RestoringForeskin.org Restoring Tally

True, but freedom of religion only applies to practicing it on a personal level and when it does not otherwise violate the law. There are limits to practicing your religion when it involves the well-being of others.

Irgun

"…ritual cutting of the male genitals." Hogwash! The foreskin can hardly be described as genitals. Would also describe a fingernail as a digit? There are good and healthful reasons for circumcision, read about them and try coming down from your high horse. As for the Muslims and Africans that "circumcise" girls, they are barbarians, fit only for the trash heap of history. They want to devour us and the Weastern Left wants to open the door for them. Allow them to circumcise girls and then next they'll be cutting our heads off. Barbarians!

HARRY-O

The evil murder cult of Islam needs to be treated the exact same way the Thugg-ee of India was. They were exterminated!

AvantiBev

It is wrong to compare the Jewish ritual of circumcision with FGM. The REASONS behind both are RADICALLY different.

FGM is done with a view toward women being causes of sexual impurity, unable to remain virginal without it, a cause of shame, etc. In other words, a DISORDERED view of woman as a lesser creature of God not a FULL CHILD of the Creator.

The Jews do not see little boys as inheritently evil nor as a cause of shame. The circumcision is a mark of the bond between Israel and God not because little boys sexuality needs to be tamed or because he will shame his family.

http://www.RestoringForeskin.org Restoring Tally

The motivations behind FGM and MGM do not matter. In both cases the genitals of children are being altered for ritualistic reasons, that is, the genital cutting has no therapeutic need. Unfortunately, the culture in the US abhorrs female genital cutting, but condones male genital cutting. This a clear gender-based bias.

I was circumcised at birth. I am not Jewish. I would preferred to have kept all my sex organ.

PS: In the US, male circumcision was introduced by the likes of JK Kellogg to sexually repress boys and reduce masturbation. Also, many of the proponents of FGM cite the exact same reasons (cleaner, more pleasing) used in the US supporting male circumcision.

Include Ayaan Hirsi Ali among those "ignorant Liberals." She equates the two, and she has experienced fgc herself.

BS1977

Hard to believe this science fiction barbarism ever existed, and still exists in our sorry world. Read Hirsi Ali's incredible book, INFIDEL…she knows all about the misery and psychological torment of growing up as a young woman , subjected to the barbaric practices of FGM…..this is beyond child abuse…it is torture……and pure evil.

Duncan Druhl

Bowing down to the spirit of the terrorist is just as good as telling them that you don't have the hormonal wherewithal to defend yourself and, indeed, defeat "him".

Either nobody in the US understands the 8th Century, tribal cultural state of mind or the entire establishment is on a perverse self-destruct kick. Does not the evil of these people and their winding their way into your household seem at all bothersome?

Or is the Yale University Cowardice Culture (YUCC) coming out again in those who have not the moral courage to support the proper tradition in which most of us grew up?

The obvious cowardice of the American Establishment is sickening. They gave up their faith in God, have been chowing down on feminine hormone meat for decades, and in decisions that make moral people sick, give in to Satan with barely a whimper.

Is there a word lower than politician to use to refer to these girly-men, as the US Establishment has obviously become?

Mia

1)This practice is monsterous and barbaric. "Nicking" the genitals of a girl while she's awake and held down is bad enough: Legions of women have described the psychological horror and betrayal they felt. Looking at the pictures, of the screaming children required a group of adults to restrain her sure looks like torture.

2)That's it's done at an age when young girls are very impressionable, and not when they are infants when they would have a chance to forget the trauma – appears deliberate, and therefore depraved. Has it occurred to any of the geniuses supporting this position that it is a symbol and physical cultural assault on a women's genitals designed to maximize pain and traumatize the patient? What's next for the AAP? A position on how to beat a child so as not to leave permanent marks?

3)That they have "cultural and religious reasons" cannot trump the fact that those "reasons" like "cleanliness" are non-scientific. Those are nerve endings being mutilated and destroyed. If we discovered a culture that figured out how to do partial lobotomies on young girls, would the AAP recommend a demi- or petite, "more compassionate" version?

4) How is advocating an injury to a child not a call for violence? Does the first ammendment really protect that type of speech?

Clearly the AAP has become unmoored from the moral foundations of our scientific western culture which respects and promotes the physical integrity and health of young girls.

PM66

As a physician, I strongly believe that any licensed physician or nurse who advocates or promotes FMG should have their license permanently revoked. Those who participate in any way in FMG, must face the same laws against child abuse as anyone else, resulting in arrest, trial, and if guilty conviction. The laws should mandate at least 10 years in prison for each offense without parole. IMHO, those members of the AAP who voted for embracing this crime a part of medical practice must permanently lose their license to practice, be banned from teaching, and be thoroughly investigated to determine whether they have already committed crimes against children in their practice. The AAP also wanted to collect information from child patients without parental permission regarding whether parents owned legal firearms and maintained that legal firearms were a significant risk to the lives of children (guns but not legal guns are definitely a risk to gang members) with the long term goal being confiscation of firearms from law abiding citizens. The risk of death to non-gang member youths were greater from diaper pails than guns!
Clearly most parents need to take their kids to FP's and away from pediatricians. (I am not an FP).

Seek

Radical paleoconservatives such as F. Carolyn Garglia and Joseph Sobran also have justified FGM. For them, the practice is a revolt against feminism and hence an affirmation of "tradition." Indeed, the multicultural Left and the traditionalist Right can be said to operate as a de facto coalition against modern white people.

It's also necessary to add that some feminists of the Left really do speak out against the barbarity of this mutilation, especially The Nation's Katha Pollitt and noted immigration restrictionist Brenda Walker.

By the way, I'm not too keen on male circumcision either. Though more benign than the female variety, there is a good case against it.

http://www.RestoringForeskin.org Restoring Tally

It is a common misperception that FGM is worse than male genital cutting. The WHO defines four types of FGM. A clitorectomy and infibulation are much, much more severe than male circumcision. A hoodectomy is analogous to male circumcision because only the female prepuce, or hood, is excised. The nicking and blood-letting variety is much less severe than male circumcision (which was noted by the AAP in their policy statement).

Regardless of severity, we should leave the sex organs of our children alone.

http://www.resonoelusono.com/NaturalBornCitizen.htm Alexander Gofen

"Regardless of severity, we should leave the sex organs of our children alone."

We don't burn people at the stake any more. We can stop mutilating the genitals of boys and girls. If an adult decides to participate in a religious rite, then that is fine, but don't mess with the sex organs of children.

Islam is more important to Muslims than Laws, The Constitution, & People. Those who stand in the way will be crushed. It's high time that someone with balls ends ANY immigration of anymore Muslims.
Any religion that calls for ending our nation s/b banned. PERIOD!

US scientists said Sunday there is strong evidence linking oral sex to cancer, and urged more study of how human papillomaviruses may be to blame for a rise in oral cancer among white men.

In the United States, oral cancer due to HPV infection is now more common than oral cancer from tobacco use, which remains the leading cause of such cancers in the rest of the world.

Researchers have found a 225-percent increase in oral cancer cases in the United States from 1974 to 2007, mainly among white men, said Maura Gillison of Ohio State University. "The rise in oral cancer in the US is predominantly among young white males and we do not know the answer as to why."

It is obvious that the only way men can acquire the HPV virus is through the oral stimulation of one’s partner’s clitoris which allows the virus to enter the mouth. The virus no doubt is harbored in the prepuce of the clitoris just as it has been found that HPV also resides in the foreskins of males, through the transmission of which cervical cancer occurs in females. Thus a hoodectomy could, by removing the part that harbors the virus, significantly reduce or eliminate the risk of women transmitting the virus to their male partners.

iPack

Ahmed, you are nuts. I am a medical professional and the clitoris is not large enough to harbor "smegma". The clitoris is not the only area the tongue comes into contact with during oral sex and there is absolutely no scientific proof of your statement about HPV. The clitoris contains as many nerve endings as an entire penis, and stimulation of a surgically exposed clitoris would be painful. It can be very painful to have clitoral stimulation to the underside of the clitoris which has no hood. Since I actually have a clitoris, I know what I am talking about. It has a hood for a reason…to protect the highly sensitive organ and buffer some of the sensation, which if too intense is NOTsexually pleasurable…it is PAINFUL. And the prepuce is NOT the hood of the clitoris. It is the actual tip of the clitoris and the most sensitive part. It would be the same thing as slicing off the head, or glans, of the penis. Nice try rationalizing this extremely cruel and misogynistic act.